Battle of Trafalgar Conference

Held at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

Friday 14th – Saturday 15th October 2005

To mark the final year of the Nelson Decade, the Conference Steering Group, led by the Royal Naval Museum, and supported by Action Stations, the 1805 Club, the Nelson Society, the Society for Nautical Research and Royal Navy, organised the Battle of Trafalgar Conference. This important two-day international event, attended by 240 people, was held in the auditorium of the hi-tech Action Stations at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Lectures given at the conference are listed below. Synopses of highlighted papers can be found by clicking on the title. It is hoped that the full conference papers will be published sometime in the future.

Section 1: The Campaign

• Keynote Address: Trafalgar: Myth and Reality - Dr Michael Duffy, University of Exeter

• La Grande Armée of 1805: From the Great Ocean to the Great Continents - Dr Michael Broers, Oxford University

• Beyond the Wooden Walls: The British Defences against Invasion 1803-1805 - Professor Clive Emsley, Open University

• The Naval Campaign – Summer 1805 - Brian Lavery, National Maritime Museum

• Austerlitz and the French - Dr Peter Hicks, Fondation Napoléon, Paris/University of Bath

Section 2: The Battle

• The French Perspective - Contre Amiral Rémi Monaque, Toulon, France

• The Spanish Perspective - Dr Agustin Guimerá y Ravina, Instituto de Historia, CISC, Madrid

• The British Perspective - Dr Colin White, National Maritime Museum/Royal Naval Museums

• Trafalgar Re- fought - The Inshore Squadron presented a computerised re-construction of the Battle

• The Nelson Touch in the 21st Century - Admiral Sir Jonathan Band KCB, Commander-in-Chief Fleet